From David Kestenbaum at Planet Money:
"You would never look at a map
of the Hudson River (see above), point to the spot where the Tappan Zee Bridge
is, and say, "Put the bridge here!" The Tappan Zee crosses one of the widest points on the Hudson — the bridge is more than three miles long. And if you go just a few miles south, the river gets much narrower. As you might expect, it would have been cheaper and easier to build the bridge across the narrower spot on the river.
So I wanted to answer a simple question: Why did they build the Tappan Zee where they did, rather than building it a few miles south?"
As you might imagine, building a big expensive bridge in the wrong place had nothing to do with economics, science, environmental concerns, engineering, logic or common sense, but everything to with... what's left? Politics. Find out more here